america at last puts its own fiscal house in order, and that has to be now. mending fences. president obama calls marco rubio and lindsey graham to talk immigration reform as john mccain faces an angry town hall at home. >> i'd like to respond to any questions or comments or insults that you may have. >> believe me, that is only the beginning. wait until you see what happens next. joe biden being biden. the vice president's frank advice to parents on self defense and gun control. >> if you want to protect yourself, get a double-barrel shotgun. you don't need an ar-15. it's harder to aim, it's harder to use, and, in fact, you don't need 30 rounds to protect yourself. buy a shotgun. buy a shotgun. and cyber war as the white

house promises a more aggressive response to hacking attacks. we're joined by house intelligence chairman mike rogers. and eyes on the road. we'll reveal the real reason why almost everybody has dash cam in russia. >> apparently in russia it's common in your morning commute to involve a hatchet dispute, fighter chopper fly by, or, i don't know, tank! how unfazed are russians? >> and the cows, they just got up and went on their way across the street. unbelievable. good day. jim will bring us more on that in a few moments. i'm andrea mitchell live in washington. if you ever wondered just why comprehensive immigration reform

is such a heavy lift for lawmakers, just ask john mccain. he got an earful at a town hall meeting in arizona last night. >> why didn't the army go down there and stop them? because the only thing that stops them, i'm afraid to say and it's too damn bad, but is a gun. that's all that will stop them. >> the border's 2,000 miles long, sir. i don't know how much troops and army people you think would have been required. i don't know how many you think will be required, but i'll give you expert information that shows you probably maybe you're talking about 2 million soldiers. you want to round up 11 million people and send them back to their country? you're not going to do that. they are not going to do that, though. they are people who have been here illegally for 50 years or 40 years. and then telling them to become guest workers? no, you can't do that. why can't you do that? because we're a judeo christian

nation. >> you're a senator with a government doing nothing about it. you said build a dang fence. where's the fence? >> in case you missed it, i showed you. >> that's not a fence! >> it's not a fence? it's a banana. we put up a banana with about $600 million appropriations we have. >> that is just sort of a snapshot of what these senators and members of congress are encountering on their recesses. joining me now for our daily fix, chris cillizza, managing editor of postpolitics.com and "new york times" david sanger. a lot to get to today. first, chris cillizza, build the dang fence. that was john mccain's campaign advertisement a couple of years ago, and now it's being thrown back at him and he's trying to take a rational approach and he's facing the anger of the people who live near the border. >> you know, andrea, you can sort of follow the politics of the attempt to comprehensively reform immigration through the

sort of lens of john mccain. remember in 2007, john mccain was very involved in this idea of comprehensive immigration reform. that support virtually ended his candidacy for president. he abandoned that and wound up in him coming back to be the 2008 nominee. in 2010 where the build the dang fence ad ran, he was facing a republican primary in his senate race saying that mccain was for amnesty, mccain wanted to let people who were here illegally stay. mccain ran hard to the right, won the primary easily. now it's john mccain looking at his legacy, i think, and saying coming back to sort of where he was in 2007 and saying, look, these 11 million people aren't just going to go back. we need to do something about the system that's broken and still there is that opposition. in some ways it's not different from the opposition that was there in '07, frankly, andrea, that led him to kind of walk

away from his initial support from immigration reform because he wanted to be the republican presidential nominee. >> now, david sanger, you have john mccain facing this, but for the first time now, the president called marco rubio in israel, reached out to marco rubio, reached out to lindsey graham. he's finally calling the republican members of the bipartisan coalition after only dealing with chuck schumer and the democrats up until then. >> it's a big change for the president. i think as chris indicated, you saw in that clip a republican party that is caught between its traditional base and its past. and in marco rubio, what it hopes is its future. they all saw the numbers coming out of this presidential election. they saw how hispanics voted. they recognized that they needed to change, but the party's having a difficult time just getting back to where george w. bush was in 2001 when he first

came in and proposed an immigration reform that sort of went away as soon as 9/11 happened. >> let me ask you about the sequester, chris cillizza, because the pentagon is suggesting there will be 700,000 civilian layoffs. real people are being effected now, but everyone expects this will kick in in nine days and then, i guess, the white house thinks they'll negotiate the continuing resolution and some sort of an agreement will occur magically before the end of march. republicans still say they won't buy into any taxes. so we haven't bridged any of these gaps. >> we haven't, andrea. look, i know the president came out and gave a statement yesterday sort of expressing his desire for a deal, but i think this is really about -- and republicans are doing this too -- about positioning for march 2nd and beyond. no one expects a congress, who isn't even here this week, they are taking the president's week off, fine with me if i had that week off. they are taking this week off.

next week they are back. congress doesn't get big budget deals done in eight days' time, seven days' time. the political positioning to see who has the upper hand in the negotiations that, in theory, will go on once we past march 1st and the cuts, as you point out which will, particularly in the federal workforce, will effect things. once people realize those are happening and demand of their elected officials something that averts those cuts in the future. >> and the whole question of cyber attacks, the administration, eric holder and others are going to come out with their proposals this afternoon. we've been reporting on this, but you, david sanger, were the first to report on the study by a top security firm, which for the first time zeroed in not just on china, but a particular building in shanghai, which is believed to house a unit, a top elite unit of the chinese army. >> i think the difference in the

long report that we published in "the times" yesterday, which was based on what they did, then we went off on other security firms to see if we could confirm their findings, and we did. was that for the first time these attacks that the chinese have largely denied are coming out of the government have been taken right down to a neighborhood that's dominated by the headquarters of this unit 61398. it's the cyber unit, a major cyber unit, of the people's liberation army. and the element of surprise here is how much is coming either out of that building or you've got to believe out of the noodle shops surrounding that building, given the volume, it's hard to believe -- >> we're talking about thousands of cyber attacks against at least 141 companies, 27 industries, at least according to this one report that officials have confirmed for both you and me. >> that's right. and this was just following one

major chinese hacking group called comment crew or the shanghai group, which is believed synonymous with this p. l.a. unit. that does not include many of the other chinese groups of which there are probably about 20 that are followed regularly. by the way, "the new york times" was hit by a chinese group, but wasn't the one we wrote about. >> separate. >> yes. >> well, david sanger, more to come on this. thank you very much for joining us. and chris cillizza, as well. joining me now for his first "andrea mitchell reports" debut as an nbc news and msnbc political analyst, david axelrod, former senior advisory to president obama. thank you very much. great to have you with us on this team. let's talk about the sequester. >> good to be with you. >> i bet it's better to be with us than back in the white house right now, given what the president is facing. there's a lot of posturing from both sides. how do you see the president working his way out of this budget situation? i assume that you think he has

the politics behind him. >> well, the dilemma for him in moving forward here is i think you have a country that is kind of inured to fiscal crisis like this. they've always resolved themselves, so it's hard to raise people's sense of alarm about these things, because their assumption is this is just washington being washington. so, it may take, as chris suggests, and i think we're going to see the deadline passed, it may take actual pain for people to pay attention, say, this one is real. this is meaningful. there has to be action. >> and, david, john kerry gave his first speech as secretary of state. he was at uva in charlottesville this morning and this is what he had to say about the impact of the budget. >> think about it. it's hard to tell the leadership of any number of countries that

they have to resolve their economic issues if we don't resolve our own. let's reach a responsible agreement that prevents these senseless cuts. let's not lose this opportunity because of politics. >> david, he's pointing out that this is a national security issue. this is an issue of foreign policy and domestic policy merging. >> well, there's no question about it. i think there are real consequences to the sequester. remember, it was put in place because the thought was that the cuts were so odious that no rational legislator, no rational government official, would allow it to happen, and so they are painful and they will have impact. and it is troubling. and the question is whether when congress returns next week there will be a sense of urgency about it, but i do think, as i said earlier, the problem right now is the public has sort of tuned out to all this because it's part of the washington follies

at this point. and their sense is somehow it will all work out. >> and there's also a feeling that washington leaders on both sides have been crying wolf for so long and they always somehow kick it down the road and it never crashes the markets. but you never know until it happens whether or not it's actually going to happen. i want to ask you about -- >> i also think, andrea, one other thing i believe is that there is a belief on the part of some of the republicans in congress that maybe the sequester is all right. maybe this is another way of shrinking government in a dramatic way. and i think, you know, that's a dangerous idea, but it's not uncommon in some quarters on capitol hill. >> no doubt. i want to ask you about immigration reform, because despite what happened to john mccain at a town hall meeting last night in arizona, there is a general feeling that -- i know i've talked to chuck schumer and other democrats who are working on this -- that something may

actually happen, that copy of the president's plan, perhaps, was poorly timed. the fact that a reporter got a copy of it and it did upset marco rubio and a number of the republicans, but the president's now reached out, called rubio, called lindsey graham. is this the start of a real effort by the president to try to bridge these gaps? >> well, first of all, i think he had to make those calls. it was a mistake that that report was leaked. i think it was disseminated too widely. i know from my own experience in the white house when these reports are disseminated among agencies, inevitably, they get leaked. and this got leaked in an untimely way, so he had to call them and settle down the brew ha-ha that ensued as a result of that. i believe it will move forward for the reason david sanger suggested. i think republicans are looking at the results of the last

election and there's no doubt that the president got 71% of the latino vote. it was the reason, part of the reason, that he carried states like nevada, colorado, florida. they are looking at their future. a state like texas in one or two cycles is going to be in play because of the large hispanic population there. so they are wanting to get right on the issue. in terms of the president's moves, my understanding is his staff has been meeting with the staff of the gang of eight right along two or three times a week. so there's been communication, but i think it's a very delicate dance because of what senator mccain encountered in arizona. i think the republicans are very sensitive to how this is orchestrated, and so the leak of that report was an unfortunate thing from the standpoint of trying to get something done. >> and, finally, i don't know if you're a golfer, but the best

golfer and perhaps the most famous golfer in the world, tiger woods, had this to say about the president on the course. >> he hit the ball well. got an amazing touch. he can certainly chip and putt. if he ever spent, after these four years, if he spends more time playing the game of golf, i'm sure he can get to where he's a pretty good stick. >> i think it's going to be a while before the president gets enough time to really work on that golf game, but that's pretty good. >> you need a good touch to play in washington, i'll tell you that. i think tiger also showed some good political skills there and good diplomatic skills in his description of the president's game. so, maybe he has a future in politics after golf and the president has a future in golf after politics. >> let's be more sure of the second than the first, but that's another whole story. >> i agree with you. >> david axelrod, thanks for

having you. thank you very much. i hope this is just the beginning of a beautiful relationship. >> i look forward to it, andrea. >> thank you. now the sequester nine days from now kicking in. are there any options left? former director and member of the president's debt commission alice rivlin joining us. still ahead, live in south africa where there were chilling new details today revealed by both sides in the case against oscar pistorius. this is "andrea mitchell reports" only on msnbc. ♪ no two people have the same financial goals. pnc works with you to understand yours and help plan for your retirement. visit a branch or call now for your personal retirement review.

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one of the nation's leading budget experts says that it's still possible to revive that grand bargain, the real budget deal, if politicians would only stop playing the blame game. joining me now, alice rivlin, the founding director of the cbo

and former omb director, also a former member of the fed, former vice chair of the fed. you've done it all. well, alice, why do you have some optimism that there is still a chance to do something significant about the budget? >> i can't believe we're going to be stupid enough not to. i think that's the main reason. everybody who is involved understands that what has to happen is to get our debt under control, not immediately, not too fast. we shouldn't do this dumb sequester thing, but we should get the party's back to the bargaining table and say how are we going to stabilize our debt so it isn't growing faster than our economy can grow. that means entitlement reform. it means tax reform. everybody knows that. and we've got to get back to it. >> the president said that he's in favor of entitlement reform.

he has been specific about dealing with medicare and some aspects of retirement, but has he been specific enough? i'm going to ask you about taxes in a minute, but from the president and the white house's perspective, as he put enough out there on the table to reel in the republicans and get them to negotiate seriously? >> well, i hope so. he's put some things on the table that his own troops didn't like, which is absolutely necessary. he had to do that to show that he was serious. one thing is the reform of the consumer price index, which is really a technical adjustment, but it would mean slightly lower social security benefits and other benefits going forward. now, you could offset that with other changes in the law, but it is the right thing to do. and his own troops were kind of unhappy about that, but he put it out there and he has certainly put medicare adjustments of various sorts on

the table. the table that matters is the one that they will actually be negotiating around, and they've got to both get there and then cut a deal. >> what do you say to republicans who say we did revenue last time to avoid the last deadline and we're not revisiting that and that's what the republicans say? >> i think they are wrong, because since we started into this effort to contain the debt, we have done a large piece of spending reduction. the budget control act of august '11, you remember that, that froze discretionary spending for ten years. that picked up a trillion dollars or so over the ten years. that's not small change. and in addition to that, the various continuing resolutions have cut discretionary spending. so, it's not the problem. the problem is the entitlements and taxes.

so, that's what they ought to be talking about. >> what do you think of simpson/bowles revisited this slightly scaled back plan they unveiled yesterday? >> it's the right idea. they are saying exactly what i'm saying, get back to the bargaining table and work on the things that are driving the debt in the future, which is the aging of the population, the fact that health care costs have been going up rapidly. we need to slow the growth of the health care spending, and we're going to need some more revenue from a reformed tax system. that's what i'm saying, that's what they are saying. >> alice rivlin, it's always a pleasure. thank you very much for visiting us. >> thank you. >> hope spring's eternal. up next, in the politico briefing, advice from joe biden. and house intelligence chair mike rogers. this is "andrea mitchell reports" only on msnbc.

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in today's politico briefing, on tuesday, vice president biden offered advice to the readers of "parents" magazine when asked what law-abiding citizens can do to protect themselves from criminals, and here's part of his answer. >> i told my wife we live in an area that's wooded and somewhat secluded. jill, if there's ever a problem, walk out on the balcony here, take the double-barrelled shotgun and fire two blasts outside the house. you don't need an ar-15. it's harder to aim. it's harder to use, and, in fact, you don't need 30 rounds to protect yourself. buy a shotgun. buy a shotgun. >> john harris is the editor in chief of politico. that's joe being joe, but is there a strategy here? is this part of the overall campaign to try to persuade people that the people in the white house use guns and are

not, you know, against the second amendment as they try to control the gun violence? >> i think so, andrea. i think you did put your finger on it. one of the things appealing about vice president biden is he is a spontaneous figure. you don't get the sense every word that comes out of his mouth is carefully scripted. i do think democrats have a challenge to say, look, we are opposed to some kinds of guns because we think they have no lawful purpose and regulating them or banning them would be an important step to limiting crime, but we're not hostile to guns in general and certainly we're not hostile to the people in many parts of the country for whom guns are a big part of the culture. hunting it a big part of the culture and an ethos of self protection that guns are legitimate as a means of protection. so they are, indeed, walking a line in trying to balance different interests on this kind

of issue. >> john, some people have been surprised that the president has really stayed with this. we saw his emotional speech in chicago last friday talking about hadia pendleton and the fact this has not been a one-off issue for the white house after newtown. do they think they can get something done with the legislation in congress? >> i have not been surprised they've stuck with it, personally. i do think an about-face would be fairly obvious and there would be a political cost to that, and i do think that they believe two things. one, substantively there's a possibility of getting some measure, certainly not the full package that president obama has put forward, and i also think politically they feel that the country is on their side on this issue in the wake of newtown and other incidents and they are happy to press that political advantage. >> and, in fact, biden, joe biden is going to be in connecticut tomorrow with

senator bloomenthal and others talking about this at another forum, so they are keeping it up, every day, at least some effort on gun laws. thank you very much, john harris, for our politico briefing. up next, we'll talk to virginia tech shooting survivor colin goddard about how the victims of gun violence are trying to campaign against tighter gun laws. you're watching "andrea mitchell reports" only on msnbc. today is gonna be an important day for us. you ready? we wanna be our brother's keeper. what's number two we wanna do? bring it up to 90 decatherms. how bout ya, joe? let's go ahead and bring it online. attention on site, attention on site. now starting unit nine. some of the world's cleanest gas turbines

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in other headlines today, former congressman jesse jackson jr. and his wife are both in court today to finalize their guilty pleas for federal charges in connection with more than $750,000 in campaign funds spent on luxury items. jackson's wife is expected to appear alongside him in the next hour. sentencing for the former congressman is now expected next month. the post office is going fashion forward.

this is hard to believe. in their quest to inch closer to profitability for the agency, langishing in the red, they've signed a deal with a cleveland-based apparel company to launch a new line of all-weather wear next year. i checked this out. i thought maybe it was a joke from the onion, but it's real. they are going to try to expand the line and market it in the future. joining me now is colin goddard, a survivor of the virginia tech shooting, and assistant director of federal legislation for the brady campaign to prevent gun violence. colin, good to see you again. tell me where we are now in these weeks since newtown, weeks and months since newtown. how has the nra done and what about your campaign to try to counteract it? >> we've made a lot of progress in the past two months, andrea. last week we just got done with a major fly-in with victims and survivors of gun violence throughout the country coming in to d.c. to lobby their representatives for two days. this week we have district

meetings with members across the country and next week we have the first markup in the senate judiciary committee and major events and rallies across the country. we've been rolling, making a lot of progress, connecting with a lot of people and making sure the public opinion is being heard here on capitol hill. >> now, the nra, which has money to spare, apparently, is already targeting senators who are running in 2014 with ads that are going to appear across the country tomorrow. >> right. we've seen a lot of ads from both sides, and i think, you know, we're trying to stay true to the issue, trying to stay true to the specifics of what we're proposing, not speak in vague generalities that don't understand what we're really talking about, and because of that, we're seeing the american public maintain their engagement. we've hardly seen the people still engaged in gun violence prevention after a major shooting. this is different. having leadership in the white house helps contribute to that fact. >> the nra campaign we're told is going to reach out to states,

$350,000. here are the senators, one of maine and democratic incumbents being targeted. because of the open seat of jay rockefeller. are you able to counteract that? what have you found in going around to the offices on the hill? are these people vulnerable, and are they resisting your entreaties? >> i think most members are realizing the american public are behind these public safety measures, you know. we want background checks on gun sales. now with the emergence of kelly and gabby giffords and the super p pac, bloomberg, as well, we're poised to stand in position and support people who vote for common sense safety measures. >> at this point, do you think the common agreement will be on background checks, something that the nra at least in the past supported? >> i think so. it's been great to see, you know, that has kind of like the no brainer, yeah, let's get that

done. now we're talking about the other issues in the president's proposal. we think we need to look at the issue comprehensively. there's no one thing that's going to solve all gun crimes, but background checks is the lowest-hanging fruit and people get it. it's great we're getting consensus there and building it in other areas, too. >> the vice president was saying to this online conference sponsored by "parents" magazine, get a gun, get a shotgun, load your shotgun. is that the right message? >> like you said, biden being biden. he has a very candid way of speaking, you know, and i think it's just clear the president and the administration support the second amendment and proposals that they are putting forth is not going to stop any law-abiding good american owning a gun but will make it difficult for people to get their hands on a gun in the first place, which is what this is about. >> colin goddard, always good to see you. thank you so much for being here. >> glad to be back. patrick leahy is wrapping up a trip to cuba.

on tuesday, the lawmakers met with cuba's president, raul castro. he also visited with allen gross, who has been jailed since 2009 for bringing illegal satellite technology to the island, according to the cubans. there had been hopes of negotiating mr. gross's release, but there was no breakthrough. >> i was glad we had the meeting. i was glad we had the trip, and i'm anxious to talk with president obama when i get back about what we saw. >> reporter: did you see mr. gross? >> i had a long talk with mr. gross and i'll tell the president about that talk also. >> senator leahy and the delegation are now heading to haiti. and up next, house intelligence chair mike rogers on the cyber security threat from china. and happening now at the white house, vice president biden and attorney general eric older are presenting the medal of valor to 18 public safety officers from across the country. four of those recipients died in the line of fire.

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a lot of new information came out at today's second day of the hearing for oscar pistorius, some damaging to the defense, but some contradicting the prosecution. in the courtroom today and joining me now. who seemed to have more leverage today as this case was emerging? >> reporter: well, it did seem the family of oscar pistorius left the courthouse pretty optimistic and much more upbeat than they have been during the last few days, six days into this investigation. we heard from the officer who is leading it. he talked to the court about a witness statement, someone who claimed to have heard non-stop argument in the hours before the killing of reeva steenkamp on valentine's morning. now, he was questioned further, and then he revealed that this witness might have been as far away from the house of oscar pistorius as 600 yards.

there were gasps and there were bursts of laughter from oscar pistorius's family sitting inside the public gallery at that point. then he was asked about the apparent discovery of medication in his home. he initially said that these were steroids, then he corrected himself and said it was testosterone. and to further questions, he revealed actually this was a herb or a remedy that was not in any way banned. and, again, there were gasps from the family of oscar pistorius inside the public gallery, andrea. >> thank you very much for the update from south africa. meanwhile, china is again denying that cyber security report blaming one of their elite secret military units for thousands of cyber attacks against american companies, but very prominent leaders in congress are not buying the denial. congressman mike rogers is the chair of the house intelligence committee. thanks very much, congressman, for being with us. we saw the report yesterday. we've been reporting on this,

and my sources have been telling me that these allegations are correct, that china and in particular this one building or area in shanghai, which does house this unit of the chinese army, is responsible for a lot of this. what can you tell us about it? >> well, i can't confirm the specifics of the report, but can tell you this is very consistent with the types of information that we've been getting on china for some time now. and as serious as this one location is, and it is certainly that serious, this is just one part of what is a very robust military and intelligence chinese government effort to conduct espionage through the web stealing intellectual property and repurposing it to its companies in china to compete illegally against u.s. companies, and it is breathtaking, it's serious, and will cost us the next generation of prosperity if we don't do something about it.

>> the president has complained at the highest levels to the chinese. this is not the first time we've heard about this, and the chinese deny it and i'm told that the american diplomats get nowhere when they bring this up with chinese leadership. >> yeah. that's part of the problem. we need to make this a bilateral, one, two, three, four, and five-numbered issue with any discussions with china moving forward. and we need to take other aggressive steps. we need to identify individuals, deny visas, visas of their families. start taking it as serious as it is consequential to american businesses. i can't tell you how serious this problem is. there are two companies left in america, andrea, one is companies that have been hacked and know it and two the companies that have been hacked and don't know it. it's unfortunate at the scope of the problem here that we're just not stepping up to deal with it to protect american jobs. that's really what this is about at the end of the day.

>> also a national security issue involving infrastructure, because we're hearing from the president in the state of the union that we're talking about companies involved in nuclear power plants, with the grid, the electric grid, financial services, with the pipelines. >> yeah. well, here's what we know. nation states, russia, china, others, have a part of their military planning, what's called prepping the battlefield. they'll go in any confrontation and shut down pipelines, electric grids, and all of those things. we saw the russians do it before they invaded a few years ago, so it's become a part of regular military planning. but where that gets very serious, and that's serious enough, you have countries like iran who are not rational actors who believe they have nothing left to lose by trying to take down our financial services sector, by trying to take down electric grids or other things that are hugely consequential to our economy and lives of u.s.

citizens. we saw them probing just a few weeks ago some of our american financial institutions. we saw what they did to aud ya arabia, a ram co, one of their major oil production companies, a very lethal attack on their systems that caused huge problems for them. we see iran now here probing, as i just talked about. all of these are real. it's not movie stuff. this is real. it's happening thousands of times a day. and we need to step up and really meet this challenge head on. we can do it. we offered a bipartisan bill last year called "cyber information sharing" so we could share classified information that we get about what threats are out there, have the private sector say here's the threats that we're seeing. very robust sharing of cyber threat information. that would be a huge step in the right direction. confronting china directly with bilateral talks on the cost of cyber espionage would be another way of dealing with this.

and, as you said i said, getting more aggressive about naming names and starting to deny visas and other things and say we're as serious about this as you are about stealing the information of american businesses. >> now, two quick points to play devil's advocate, the iranians might argue they are retaliating and i know you can't confirm anything, but we have reported, as others, that the u.s. and israel were engaged in trying to undermine their secret and, arguably, illegal nuclear program. so, if we play this game, too, aren't we then going to get retaliated against? >> well, when you talk about cyber attacks, and i'd be very, very, very cautious about subscribing or ascribing, excuse me, an author to the software that you talked about, but any time that happens, and by the way, this is happening thousands of times a day. we're catching a lot of it. some of it we don't. you need to understand we have to have two approaches to this. one is to build our defenses.

you don't want to punch your neighbor in the nose without hitting that weight room first and getting yourself in shape for what comes next. we're not there yet. so, my argument is, get our defenses where we need to get them, and then build an offensive capability only when absolutely necessary as a part of military planning, like the russians, like the chinese, just to have it. and it would be absolutely just unconsequential if we didn't at least prep for having that capability. and we have some great capabilities. our intelligence services have great capabilities, but we're so at risk because 95% of our networks are private-sector networks here. we're not talking about government activity to government activity. that's very different. has been happening since george washington asked nathan hale to spy on the british in new york city. that part has been going on forever. what we're talking about here is something completely different, a nation state attacking the private sector. a nation state stealing information, then giving it to

their businesses to compete against the united states. this is a whole new day when it comes to cyber warfare. >> mike rogers, congressman, thank you very much, mr. chairman. >> thanks. >> thanks for the update. there is a reason why so many russian dash cams pictures and caught picture of that amazing meteor flaming across the sky in russia. why are there so many dash cams in russia? we found out. >> when the meteor came crashing in to siberia, the moment was captured for the ages caught in the act by these small inpensive dash cams. in a country where traffic can be a matter of life and death, few russian drivers leave home without them. it protects me from the lawless drunkenity lotis on the road he

said, i have proof it wasn't me. all those cameras are capturing so much more. how about a tank crossing your lane or a truck load of cows spilling in front of you. or the wheel of a crashed plane slamming into you or even being buzzed by a helicopter. or a fighter jet. with road rage common place, they document who started the brawl or fired the pistol. evidence that can trump even the most corrupt russian traffic cop. through all the mayhem, dash cams are more than a tool for survival. they are providing a unique form of russian entertainment gone viral. sometimes it's magic. my husband and i can't stop eating 'em! what's...that... on your head? can curlers! tomato basil, potato with bacon... we've got a lot of empty cans. [ male announcer ] progresso. you gotta taste this soup.

chris is back with us and i understand it's not next 24, it's today. we have to say happy birthday, chris.

>> it's true. it is my birthday. me and -- oh, sure. i didn't think this was a produced segment. me and rihanna. >> there you are. you and rihanna. >> there you go. we are always palling around. >> all i want to know, is this the beginning of a chuck todd look for you? is that how you approach the aging process? >> everything i do, i do in homage to chuck. i think that's known. i am actual lie thinking of just going mustache rather than goatee. >> we will stay tuned. >> any picture i'm going to screen grab the picture of me and rihanna and pretend we were on television together. >> do that. chris, have a wonderful birthday, my friend. >> thank you. >> we all love you and thank you. that does it for this edition of

"andrea mitchell reports" on chris's birthday. thomas roberts is here for tamron hall. >> you can find out if chris and rihanna are the same age. were they born in the same year? >> i don't think so. when is your birthday? >> in october. you have time to shop. >> me too. scorpio. >> libra. everybody has time to shop and for the next hour. coming up, president obama ups the pressure on republicans to get behind the sequester replacement plan today. he does local tv interviews in states that are going to be hard hit with the automatic spending cuts. we will break down the president's strategy and follow breaking news. the wife of jesse jackson junior set to follow her husband's lead and please guilt tow misusing campaign funds. all coming up next on "news nation." don't go away.

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